Marina Orlova: Caress of the Cunning Linguist on Valentine's Day

Passion lacks an expiration date, and those who have found themselves in its warm embrace are wont to relinquish the delight. Man does not live by work alone, for passion is that which drives us beyond survival to strive for success.

I’m not often given over to poetic ramblings, but on this Valentines Day, I feel myself entitled to at least one swoon and maybe more before the sun sets. After all, today is one marked by monumental sacrifice, altruism and selfless conviction, or so the grammarians tell me.

It is passion that guides my humble words dear readers, but today it is not my own passion for language, but that of another; a nimble wordsmith of truly remarkable talent. The cunning linguist of whom I speak is Marina Orlova, the philologist in chief at “Hot For Words,” a concept that straddles the intersection of pornography and higher learning.

Orlova’s plucky videos dissect the origin and etymology of words whose usage ranges from the inane to the elusive, such as floccinaucinihilipilification--the longest non-technical word in English, or metrosexual.

Unlike the naked news, Orlova is no stuffed shirt. According to her wikipedia page, she was a high school teacher in Russia before she moved to the U.S., where she was able to turn her love of words into the 16th most popular YouTube channel on planet Earth. In 2007 Wired magazine voted her "world's sexiest geek."

While Orlova flirts with the web cam, she is also filling heads with what all men crave--vocab! Orlova is the quintessential branded journalist and an Internet sensation, who's playful use of technology spices up her vids with a little je nais se quoi?

I stumbled upon Orlova quite by accident, and it is hard now to know whether my current infatuation stems from her iron-curtain good looks, her insatiable curiosity or a combination of the two. In either case, she and I share a similar fascination with words and turn of  phrase, but I was seriously beaten to the punch.

On this day of lust, dear readers, remember that it is passion that moves mountains and  once you have found your fount of aplomb, Internet stardom and calendars with your picture surely await.